Donald Trump has experience having to justify his supporters. In February, he unnecessarily wavered off track—speaking of experienced—in declining to dissociate himself from the backing of white supremacist groups and David Duke, a man he had publicly denounced on multiple occasions in the past 15 years anyway. He cleaned up the mess by readopting his previous position on Duke and repeated a two-word statement about Duke’s endorsement of him: “I disavow.”
We won’t hear Trump say that about Mike Tyson. In October, the former boxing champ, a convicted rapist, announced his support of Trump, stating that the country ought to “try something new” and be run like a business. “He should be president of the United States,” Tyson said.
Trump and Tyson go way back—”good friends” dating to 1986-87, Tyson told The Daily Beast. Part of their history reflects poorly on Trump. But for the purposes of politics, Tyson is not David Duke. The latter is a political figure with an agenda many leagues outside the mainstream and is trying to rally a movement; Tyson speaks for himself and has no cause to speak of. His endorsement of Trump has no bearing on the electorate.
Leave it to Trump to change that. At a campaign stop this week, the Republican frontrunner bragged about Tyson’s backing in one of his typical asides, saying he likes it that “the tough guys” get behind him. “Mike, Iron Mike,” Trump said fondly.
Trump boasted about Tyson in Indianapolis—the same city where Tyson was convicted in 1992. The prosecuting attorney in the case, Greg Garrison, hosts a radio show there and was taken aback, chiding Trump by saying that “rapists aren’t tough guys.” More than an unforced error, this was destined to become an issue inside the state.
Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina went to work Friday, with the latter suggesting that “it says a lot about Donald Trump’s campaign and his character that he is standing up and cheering for an endorsement by Mike Tyson.” Trump was asked on a San Diego radio station about her comments.
“I noticed that Mike Tyson endorsed me over the internet and we will take the endorsement,” he said on the Mike Slater Show. “Look, he’s a tough cookie. He had difficulty, but a lot of people had difficulty, but Mike Tyson did endorse me. What does she want me to do, tell him I don’t want his endorsement? Should I do that? You think I should do that? I don’t think so.”
Not that he would’ve done anything else after voluntarily touting Tyson.
These developments have fed some of the moral narratives against Trump: that he is unacceptably inappropriate and possesses a degrading view of women. BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski dug up a 1992 NBC Nightly News video broadcast in which Trump said Tyson was “railroaded” in the rape case and expressed doubts about the victim on several occasions. Trump even suggested that Tyson avoid jail time altogether and instead fight Evander Holyfield, with a portion of the money going to victims of rape and abuse, including Tyson’s. Garrison said, “These people seem to think they can buy their way out of anything.”
The reminders about Trump’s past involvement with Tyson have found their way into Cruz’s campaign. Cruz echoed Garrison’s line—”I don’t think rapists are tough guys”—in a Sunday morning appearance with Face the Nation. A Super PAC backing his candidacy released a targeted web ad, highlighting Gov. Mike Pence’s support (such as it is) of Cruz and Tyson’s backing of Trump.
But the bigger issue is how that reads the other way around: Trump’s backing of Tyson.
